Saturday, October 16th was a short 6-mile recovery run for me after my 25-mile effort on Thursday. 800 feet elevation gain.
Sunday, October 17th, I went out and did 15 miles with 1500 feet elevation. I didn't actually plan on going this far, and I didn't bring my pack, or any water. It was a nice day and I just tallied up a little extra mileage.
Tuesday, October 19th, I did flat and easy, a little over 7 miles with only 500 feet elevation.
On Thursday, October 21st, I set out from Red Rocks Canyon way too late in the day to do a full mountain trip, but I wanted to get some trail scouting in for future reference.
I started out on Codell trail and followed this all the way along the ridge until I joined Section 16/ Palmer Trail loop. It was a lovely and quiet evening on the trails.
I took the trail split to the west off of the typical loop, and had neat views of the Crystal Park community, as I'd never been on this part of the trail before.
There were some cool rock formations along the trail.
Soon enough, I saw a social trail heading south along the ridgeline in the expected direction of Tenney Crags.
The trail was well-cairned on the section that I was on. However, it was quickly beginning to get dark since I'd started so late. I did not want to be lost in the dark, so I returned to the Section 16 trail. I decided to complete the loop, back down towards High Drive. It was fully dark for my last two miles, but I felt safe on this trail which I've run so many times before. It was actually quite beautiful with the moon rising.
I got a total of about 10.6 miles and 3600 feet elevation gain for the day. Still not a bad total for an adventure cut short! This is a trail that I have an immediate priority to return to, and complete. From some online research, I think I found the social trail on the north side of these mountains that connects from Tenney to Mt. Arthur and Mt. Garfield. This trio of summits may be next on my list!! But I will need more time (and more daylight) to do it.
To bring this back around to the current day, I did another shorter run on Saturday, October 23rd, gaining 8 miles and 1100 feet elevation.
The clouds were really cool this evening.
I also did a few days of weightlifting throughout the week, though I didn't include the details this time.
Generally speaking, this was a little bit of a lighter week, since I didn't do something in the 20+ mile range. 😆
There is an 's' word that I wanted to mention before I close this blog out. I've been avoiding that 's' word for the last... oh, two years, give or take. The secret word is "speedwork." 😂 The truth is, I haven't been putting in the real work, the HARD runs, the stuff that makes a runner faster. Yes, I have an endurance base beyond that of most casual runners, but I severely lack speed. I'm hoping that by mentioning it here, it will help me schedule some speedwork sessions and then actually carry through. I won't be able to reach my goals for myself without including some quality sessions. I think I'll start easy by doing hill repeats before moving on to flat track intervals.
Hopefully sometime next week I'll report back with success on both speedwork and maybe even completing the Tenney-Arthur-Garfield summit trio that currently tops my list. 🤞
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